Carolina parakeet

Carolina parakeet
Mounted specimen in the Naturalis Biodiversity Center
Conservation status
Extinct (1918)  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Presumed Extinct (1918)  (NatureServe)[2]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Psittaciformes
Family:	Psittacidae
Tribe:	Arini
Genus:	†Conuropsis Salvadori, 1891
Species:	†C. carolinensis
Binomial name
†Conuropsis carolinensis (Linnaeus, 1758)
Subspecies
C. c. carolinensis C. c. ludovicianus
Synonyms
Psittacus carolinensis Linnaeus, 1758 Conurus carolinensis Lesson, 1831

The Carolina parakeet (Conuropsis carolinensis), or Carolina conure, is an extinct species of small green neotropical parrot with a bright yellow head, reddish orange face, and pale beak that was native to the Eastern, Midwest, and Plains states of the United States. It was the only indigenous parrot within its range, and one of only three parrot species native to the United States. The others are the thick-billed parrot, now extirpated,^[3] and the green parakeet, still present in Texas;^[4] a fourth parrot species, the red-crowned amazon, is debated.^[5][6][7] It was called puzzi la née ("head of yellow") or pot pot chee by the Seminole and kelinky in Chickasaw.^[8] Though formerly prevalent within its range, the bird had become rare by the middle of the 19th century. The last confirmed sighting in the wild was of the C. c. ludovicianus subspecies in 1910. The last known specimen, a male named Incas, perished in captivity at the Cincinnati Zoo in 1918,^[9][10] and the species was declared extinct in 1939.

The earliest reference to these parrots was in 1583 in Florida reported by Sir George Peckham in A True Report of the Late Discoveries of the Newfound Lands of expeditions conducted by English explorer Sir Humphrey Gilbert, who notes that explorers in North America "doe testifie that they have found in those countryes; ... parrots". They were first scientifically described in English naturalist Mark Catesby's two-volume Natural History of Carolina, Florida and the Bahama Islands published in London in 1731 and 1743.

Carolina parakeets were probably poisonous – French-American naturalist and painter John J. Audubon noted that cats apparently died from eating them, and they are known to have eaten the toxic seeds of cockleburs.^[11][12]